My art journey journal

Month: May 2016

My new art journey is very rewarding, but if I don’t put in the time , I won’t see any results. All the art masters I have surrounded myself with (albeit online or through their books) recommend practice, practice, practice. This has brought me to a mini crises as I worry if I am going about my training correctly. Am I practicing in the right direction? Am I putting in enough time? After all these crazy thoughts going through my head, I remember the story of the rabbit and the tortoise. Slow and steady wins the race! A little at a time. Some days I think: “I really do not feel like drawing one more eye, this is boring!” But, if I want to succeed I have to master my own self.

This week I focused on drawing the Nose. Here are some of my attempts:

I did not find the nose easy to draw, so I had to watch many tutorials over and over again to get it right.

This week I focused on my daily schedule and my goal planning. After listening to a book by Robin Sharma “The monk who sold his Ferrari”, I realized that I would have to become much more goal orientated if I wanted to fulfill my dream of being a world class artist.

Much soul searching happened when I finished this book. Was a really prepared to push myself hard to realize my dreams? What did I need to do to get there?

To make more time for my art would mean that I would have to wake up early every morning. Now that seemed impossible to me, as I am not a morning person by nature! But, if I wanted my dreams to become reality I would have to do it. Here is the clip I watched to help motivate me.

As part of my art training I started focusing on working out my year plan to improve my skills.

This is what I came up with:

Drawing Focus for the year

Month 1

Week 1 – Planes of the head

Week 2 – Eyes

Week 3 – Noses

Week 4 – Mouth and Teeth

Month 2

Week 1 – Ears

Week 2 – Hair

Week 3 – The complete face

Week 4 – Reviewing all I have learned

Month 3

Week 1 – Hands

Week 2 – The body as a whole

Week 3 – Stances and Gestures

Week 4 – Blind Contour practice

Month 4

Week 1 – Life Drawing Tones

Week 2 – The head

Week 3 – The skull front view

Week 4 – The skull profile

Month 5

Week 1 – The skull 3/4 view

Week 2 – The Asaro head Front

Week 3 – The Asaro head 3/4

Week 4 – The Asaro head profile

Month 6

Week 1 – The figure in Geometric forms

Week 2 – Figure Proportion

Week 3 – The skeleton

Week 4 – The block form mannequin

Month 7

Week 1 – The Ovoid Mannequin

Week 2 – Figure Abstraction

Week 3 – Review

Week 4 – Review

Much of this schedule is taken from the Jeff Watts outline for their online course (that there is no way I can afford at this stage) – have a look at it: Jeff Watts

The plan is to research each week the theme I have set out for myself and learn the skills online through watching clips and reading. Then practice, practice, practice!

One last note for this post. During all my research I kept on reading about the books of Andrew Loomis. I looked up how much this book would cost me and decided to return to my trusty online search to download the book. I found it!! After studying it I would really recommend it highly when learning about the structure of the head and hands.

Here is the free download for you in .pdf format (look below the photo for link to download book:

My first week of art training started with large amounts of research. I realized that I would need a training plan, just like Jeff Watts @wattsatelier said in his video. But how to start? How do you know what to practice? I spent hours searching the web for answers.

Straight off the bat I realized that I had bad drawing habits. Most importantly, I did not use my pencil correctly. I learnt how to sharpen, hold and use my pencil like a pro.

This clip is a bit long, but it was worth it to watch it!

Then I had to learn how to control my pencil correctly.

This clip by Proko is brilliant. As a matter of fact, I have come to absolutely love all the Proko clips. I watch them over and over to learn new drawing skills @StanProkopenko.

Some of the examples of the drawing exercises I did over and over this week!

shading and pencil control

shading and drawing in perspective

learning to draw the oval with hand control

(I filled dozens of pages with this!)

I also made myself a portable drawing easel so I could draw wherever I wanted to.

made with hardboard and wrapped in paper for smooth drawing

In my next post I will be sharing the year plan I set out for myself, my new art routine, some more clips I watched to help me learn and a great book you can download to improve your drawing of portraits.

As I have said on the homepage, I will be documenting my art journey in this blog. Before I started on this journey I thought art was an important part of my life. Unfortunately, I was one of the many “I wait for inspiration” artists. Being a very busy homeschooling mom of three children and having a life full of activity meant that inspiration only struck once every now and then. Until now I had no plan for improving my art. I had no goals other than painting when I felt like it and that made me feel as if my art had reached a plateau I could just not break through. In this post I will share some of my art before my awakening, this will serve as a background to the progress I know I will see through hard, dedicated training of my skills.

Here are some of my drawings spanning a few years. The sketch on the left I did many years ago, the middle one was done about five years ago and the sketch on the right I did a few weeks ago. I have a Facebook page for my painting work as well as more sketches for you all to look at. Facebook page link

What created this shift in my mind from mediocre artist to the desire to become a master artist? I wanted more, I wanted to carry more emotion in my work and I did not want to be the slave to my reference photos anymore. This meant that I wanted to see a painting in my mind and be able to paint it as I saw it. I have never been able to do that. I could draw anything from a photo, but I could not change the lighting, change the stance or change anything to suit my composition better.

I did some research online and stumbled upon the YouTube clip below – it changed my life!

And so my journey started with a bang! I wanted to start my training right away!

Exactly 20 days ago I woke up to a huge realization: If I wanted to be a master artist I would have to stop waiting for inspiration to overcome me before I pick up my paint brush. So my journey started with an awakening. An aha! moment. I would like to share this journey with you. Please remember that I am no master, yet! I have only just started taking baby steps. But, I know that I would have liked to see more masters show me the road they took from the start. On this journey I will share everything with you. I will share the “Youtube” clips I watched, I will post my daily drawings and I hope you will enjoy the journey as much as I know I will enjoy it. I will keep you posted!